Britain has been here before: the public promised vigilance against terror, only to discover that dangerous men walk free through gaping holes in the system. The case of Haroon Aswat, long linked to the 7/7 London bombings, was a scandal not simply because a judge wished him “all the best,” but because his release earlier this year exposes a deeper failure.

By classifying Aswat as a psychiatric patient rather than a terrorist offender, the state has effectively disabled its own ability to assess his ongoing danger to the public.

This is not an abstract risk. Aswat is no marginal figure. He was once the right-hand man to Abu Hamza, the hate preacher who turned Finsbury Park Mosque into a recruiting ground for jihad. Convicted in the United States for plotting to set up a terrorist training camp, Aswat later admitted to involvement in both 7/7 and even the 9/11 atrocities in which, apart from the bombers, 52 people of 18 different nationalities were killed and nearly 800 were injured. That should have been enough to ensure the most rigorous monitoring regime imaginable. Instead, the machinery of justice has treated him as a patient first, a terrorist second.

That distinction matters. Because he was housed in a secure hospital, not a prison, Aswat was never subject to the full range of terrorism risk assessments. MI5 and counter-terrorism police were effectively sidelined from evaluating his fitness for release. In other words, a man who once boasted of his service to Osama bin Laden stepped out into the world without the scrutiny that should be automatic for anyone of his record.

The public outrage at Mr Justice Jay’s remarks, his suggestion that life in an American jail “can’t have been much fun,” his hope that Aswat stays on medication, and his parting “all the best”, is therefore more than symbolic. The judge’s words embody the wider complacency of a system that has lost sight of its first duty: protecting the public. A terrorist is not a wayward shoplifter. A terrorist cannot be waved on with good wishes, particularly when his ideological commitment to violence has never been publicly renounced.

What is most alarming is that the very framework designed to protect society has been undermined by loopholes. Terror legislation is built to monitor and constrain convicted extremists, requiring notification of addresses, travel, and associations. Yet those safeguards are largely inapplicable when the individual in question is categorised as mentally unfit for prison. The result is a grotesque paradox: a terrorist with a psychiatric diagnosis may actually face less oversight than one without.

The authorities admit this gap exists, but little has been done to close it. As a consequence, Aswat’s risk has not been tested against the benchmarks that security services rely upon. His release is not the outcome of confidence in rehabilitation, but of bureaucratic blind spots. That is an intolerable position for a country that has lived through the carnage of 7/7.

Sympathy for the mentally ill is a mark of civilisation, but it must not be weaponised to disarm our defences. A man may suffer from schizoaffective disorder and still harbour the will to do harm. Aswat’s illness has not erased his past, nor the network of violent allegiances that shaped him. To pretend otherwise is reckless.

The victims of 7/7 deserve better than platitudes. They deserve assurance that no stone has been left unturned in assessing whether one of the architects of that slaughter remains a threat. Instead, they see a judge smiling benignly at a terrorist and a system that failed to test his intent. It is little wonder that confidence in the justice system is eroding.

The remedy is now unavoidable. Parliament must legislate to close the loophole that exempts psychiatric detainees from terrorism risk assessments. It should be mandatory for anyone with extremist links, whether in prison or hospital, to undergo rigorous evaluation by counter-terrorism professionals before any release. Notification orders must be automatic, not discretionary, and breaches should trigger immediate recall. Electronic monitoring and travel restrictions should be standard for such individuals, not optional extras. Above all, intelligence agencies must have an unambiguous legal right to track and assess former terrorists, regardless of their medical status.

Anything less is dereliction. To allow ideological zealots to slip the net under the cover of psychiatric treatment is to gamble with public safety. Haroon Aswat has benefited from a system too soft, too fragmented, and too trusting. The victims of 7/7 paid the price for complacency once before. Britain must not let it happen again, but with the likes of Judge Justice Jay sitting on the bench, we can safely assume it will.

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Read Also: Europe & UK’s Terrorism Threat picture in 2025: fragmented, hybrid, and persistent

Europol’s latest Terrorism Situation and Trend Report (TE-SAT 2025) still judges the overall terrorist threat to the EU“acute,” with jihadist terrorism the principal concern, while also tracking right-wing, left-wing/anarchist, and separatist violence and plots.

The UK’s security service gives the broad taxonomy succinctly: the primary threats are Islamist terrorism, extreme right-wing terrorism, and Northern Ireland–related terrorism, with smaller volumes of left-wing/anarchist and single-issue extremism. That blend has persisted even as the operational tempo and actors evolve.

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Main Image: Ellywa  – Own work, via Wikipedia